The Manson Murders and a Lawn Jockey

August 9th and 10th mark the anniversary of the killing spree conducted by a bunch of crazies and Charles Manson. I wasn’t alive at the time, and didn’t really care too much for the re-telling of the story in my youth, and so have little to offer by way of commemoration.

I do have a strange and kitschy connection to the whole thing, though.

A little while after the murders took place, some “unnamed relatives” were doing some drinking in LA, as was typical in those and these days. While, shall we say, “lit,” they decided to go down to the mansion of Roman Polanski, where Sharon Tate was murdered. They hopped the fence and did nothing of note, except they did leave with a small “lawn jockey” from the property.

The small statue–a racial caricature of a black man dressed as a jockey–had an extended hand on which one could tie the reins of their horse. After it’s “liberation” from the Polanski-Tate estate, it lived in Lincoln Heights, in Los Angeles, for the next 20 some odd years. My departed grandpa painted it a few times to give it a less than racially-offensive look. My fondest memories of the small man are his time guarding his yerba buena garden.

I know where the little guy is today, but I ain’t saying. Needless to say, what with time and the utter lack of interest within my family, I suspect it will one day find its way to my home. Until then, just know that he is safe and well-cared for, in southern California, and seemingly unaware of the events of 40 years ago today.

Huffington Post
My Acid Trip with Squeaky Fromme
Paul Krassner — Author
Paul Krassner’s next book is Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today, with an introduction by Arianna Huffington and a foreword by Wavy Gravy, to be published by City Lights in July 2009.
His latest book is One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist, with a foreword by Harry Shearer and an introduction by Lewis Black.
August 6, 2009

This month, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson family, is scheduled to be released on parole from a federal prison in Texas after serving 34 years behind bars for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford in 1975. Squeaky did not participate in the Tate/LaBianca killings, which I began investigating in 1971.
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Squeaky resembled a typical redheaded, freckle-faced waitress who sneaks a few tokes of pot in the lavatory, a regular girl-next-door except perhaps for the unusually challenging nature of her personality, plus the scar of an X that she had gouged and burned into her forehead as a visual reminder of her commitment to Charlie. That same symbol also covered the third eyes of her roommates, Manson family members Sandra Good and Brenda McCann.
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With his sardonic rap, mixed with psychedelic drugs and real-life theater games such as “creepy-crawling” and stealing, he had deprogrammed his family from the values of mainstream society, but reprogrammed them with his own perverted philosophy, a cosmic version of the racism perpetuated by the prison system that had served as his family.

Manson had stepped on Sandy’s eyeglasses, thrown away her birth control pills, and inculcated her with racist insensibility. Although she had once been a civil rights activist, she was now asking me to tell John Lennon that he should get rid of Yoko Ono and stay with “his own kind.”

“But,” I said, “they really love each other.”

“If Yoko really loved the Japanese people,” Sandy replied, “she would not want to mix their blood.”

Yeah your family rules! Getting a little rad and jumping over a wall or two, we all like to leave with reminders of good times. I have lots of reminders of some very good times I had. I hope the reminders last as long and hold the memory of those rad times I had. Keep up the good work family!